With nary a shredded potato or grated onion in sight, these are not your grandmother's latkes. But they are the latkes of Francis Reznick's grandmother, Mindele Tajfeld. Reznick, the owner of Rustika Cafe & Bakery on the Southwest Freeway, knows them as "sweet latkes," and she'll be making them for her family for Hanukkah.

The holiday, which commemorates the victory of Judah Maccabee over the Syrian-Greek King Antiochus in the second century B.C., begins this year on the evening of Dec. 25 and continues for eight days.

During Reznick's childhood in Mexico City, the family's longtime housekeeper, Nina Lázaro, made the sweet latkes. Lázaro had worked for Reznick's mother and later for Reznick; she learned to cook Jewish food from Reznick's Polish grandmother. The sweet latkes are similar to a Polish-Jewish recipe known as chremzel. Ergo, it seems fair to call them Tajfeld's recipe.

Lázaro "was part of my family completely," Reznick says.

There's a mystery: Sweet latkes call for matzo meal, a food traditional for Passover, a holiday celebrated in the spring. That's when Reznick's brother recalls eating these latkes. Not Reznick.

The sweet latkes are fried in oil, which is probably enough to qualify them as Hanukkah food. Fried foods are integral to the celebration. They symbolize the Miracle of Hanukkah when the victorious Macabees rededicated the Temple in Jerusalem, which had been desecrated by the Syrian-Greeks. The Jews needed oil to light the menorah but found enough for just a single day. Miraculously, the oil lasted eight days, hence the eight days of Hanukkah.

To me, these latkes taste like a cross between a doughnut and a pancake, putting them right in line with various Hanukkah culinary traditions. Israeli Jews eat sufganiot, or jelly doughnuts, while Greek Jews eat several types of pancakes, according to Nicholas Stavroulakis' Cookbook of the Jews of Greece.

To Reznick, these sweet latkes simply taste "like how I grew up."

SWEET LATKES

Chronicle kitchen-tested recipe adapted from Francis Reznick's recipe. She eats them sprinkled with powdered sugar; I like cinnamon sugar.